PiHole as part of Merlin

[Oferlaor]

hi

I think that a built in self-updating version of PiHole would be a really big feature update for Merlin. I know there are scripts out there to install it, but why not include it into Merlin?

 

[Henrik!]

Then all the other scripts should be included as well?

Sendt fra min SM-G973F med Tapatalk

 

[Jack Yaz]

It's called Diversion, and you can install it using amtm

https://diversion.ch/amtm.html

(much better than Pihole imho)

 

[Delusion]

I used PiHole and I can easily say. Diversion is fast and better , works really good , no point for running PiHole. However, what I really liked about PiHole is the web gui which is beautiful and might be handy but drawing these statistics might slow down things especially when running it on a router .
Diversion is doing a great job , it is pretty light and fast. PiHole on router might work slower.

Merlin will never integrate it but it would be nice to have a built-in Diversion\ad-blocker which can be controlled via Asus web gui without the need to enter ssh .
Maybe someday someone will be able create PiHole installation script which will work on our router but I think Diversion is good enough

 

[Vexira]

I wish I could use diversion on an a single board computer

 

[JemTheWire]

I wish I could use diversion on an a single board computer

Can I ask why? It runs perfectly well on the router, unless, of course, you don’t have an Asus or a supported model.

 

[Vexira]

Can I ask why? It runs perfectly well on the router, unless, of course, you don’t have an Asus or a supported model.

3 million+ blocked domains, puts a drain on the hardware

 

[Butterfly Bones]

hi

I think that a built in self-updating version of PiHole would be a really big feature update for Merlin. I know there are scripts out there to install it, but why not include it into Merlin?

Here is one way.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/installing-pihole-directly-on-asus-router.57262/

 

[Striker317]

Can I ask why? It runs perfectly well on the router, unless, of course, you don’t have an Asus or a supported model.

Out of scope based on Merlin’s design goals.

 

[JemTheWire]

Sorry. You misunderstood. I was asking why Vexira wished it could run on a single board computer.

I know it won’t ever get ported into Merlin

 

[Val D.]

3 million+ blocked domains, puts a drain on the hardware

Well, make them 300 million+ and your Internet will turn into a dedicated line between you and your neighbour, until you decide to block him as well. Where is this blocking obsession coming from? If you unplug the WAN you block them all, no software required.

 

[Vexira]

Well, make them 300 million+ and your Internet will turn into a dedicated line between you and your neighbour, until you decide to block him as well. Where is this blocking obsession coming from? If you unplug the WAN you block them all, no software required.

Lol I had a lot of ad block lists, some are tracking others a privacy and security, when the router comes with at least 4 GB ram I'd probably install diversion at that point, I had pi hole before I knew of the existence of diversion or I probably would have started with it instead.

It's not and obsession consideration given to the many other pinole users that run it from a virtual machine.

 

[ironclad]

You don't even need Diversion lol. First go find a hosts blocklist then take a look at this script. I've configured the script for our routers below. It downloads the Steven Black blocklist, converts it and writes the results to /jffs/configs/dnsmasq.conf.add.

Disclaimer: This is an extremely lazy solution, use at own risk. This hosts file is also notorious for having legitimate sites on the blocklist.

#!/bin/sh
# Choose from here https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
HOSTS_RAW=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
#HOSTS_RAW=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/alternates/fakenews-gambling/hosts
TMP_LOCATION=/tmp
wget $HOSTS_RAW -P $TMP_LOCATION
awk '$1 == "0.0.0.0" { print "address=/"$2"/0.0.0.0/"}' $TMP_LOCATION/hosts > /jffs/configs/dnsmasq.conf.add
#clean up!
rm $TMP_LOCATION/hosts
service restart_dnsmasq

It's not and obsession consideration given to the many other pinole users that run it from a virtual machine.

We can call them silly for wasting electrity.

 

[thelonelycoder]

You don't even need Diversion lol. First go find a hosts blocklist then take a look at this script. I've configured the script for our routers below. It downloads the Steven Black blocklist, converts it and writes the results to /jffs/configs/dnsmasq.conf.add.

Disclaimer: This is an extremely lazy solution, use at own risk. This hosts file is also notorious for having legitimate sites on the blocklist.

#!/bin/sh
# Choose from here https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
HOSTS_RAW=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
#HOSTS_RAW=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/alternates/fakenews-gambling/hosts
TMP_LOCATION=/tmp
wget $HOSTS_RAW -P $TMP_LOCATION
awk '$1 == "0.0.0.0" { print "address=/"$2"/0.0.0.0/"}' $TMP_LOCATION/hosts > /jffs/configs/dnsmasq.conf.add
#clean up!
rm $TMP_LOCATION/hosts
service restart_dnsmasq

We can call them silly for wasting electrity.

That's more or less with as much as I started into the now-called Diversion ad-blocking adventure back in 2014.

 

[ColinTaylor]

You don't even need Diversion lol. First go find a hosts blocklist then take a look at this script. I've configured the script for our routers below. It downloads the Steven Black blocklist, converts it and writes the results to /jffs/configs/dnsmasq.conf.add.

That's pretty much the exact same code that the original version of AB-Solution (the predecessor to Diversion) used back in 2014. In fact I still use a script very similar to that.

I'm "only" blocking 27,000 hosts but find that adding anything beyond that rapidly provides diminishing returns. So 3+ million hosts is obsessive as far as I am concerned.

 

[thelonelycoder]

That's pretty much the exact same code that the original version of AB-Solution (the predecessor to Diversion) used back in 2014. In fact I still use a script very similar to that.

I'm "only" blocking 27,000 hosts but find that adding anything beyond that rapidly provides diminishing returns. So 3+ million hosts is obsessive as far as I am concerned.

Then users wanted a whitelist, blacklist, option to select their own hosts files and pixelserv-tls for true https ad blocking.
During that, manually copy-pasting code or commands became too much of a burden for more and more users. Errors, pebkac's and more followed.
AB-Solution was born and evolved into Diversion.
It's called progress and simplification of complex tasks.

Who uses a command line in his mobile phone to make a call these days?